Gato
Alternative title: "GATO: WWII GATO-Class Submarine Simulation" -- Tag-lined title
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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BACKGROUND

In Gato, you play the commander of a United States submarine in the Pacific Ocean during World War II against Japanese warships.

GAMEPLAY

Gato is a 3D real-time submarine simulation game. Gameplay consists of missions where the primary directive is to navigate your submarine to track and intercept (multiple) enemy warships (patrol boats, destroyers, etc.) on the randomly created map and close in for the kill with torpedoes.

Combat itself consists of a direct visual of enemy ships (via periscope) and firing torpedoes at the correct angle to ultimately sink the ship. Be warned that although you have the element of surprise, enemy ships can fire back! 

When all hell breaks loose, an identified submarine is a sitting duck to those Japanese guns. Be prepared to direct your damage control team to fix up your damaged submarine ASAP! The mission ends when you have successfully eliminated all targets in the map.

Trivia

The highest difficulty levels of the game cause the opening mission briefing to be rendered *only* as Morse Code, forcing the player to decode it himself in real-time.

The title, Gato, is a class of the US "fleet" type long-range recon submarines. The most famous of which (in real life) is USS Wahoo.

While the submarine and the enemy ships are authentic, the terrain in GATO is a randomly generated series of islands that's supposed to be somewhere in the Pacific. We did not get realistic terrain until Sid Meier's Silent Service. 

GATO was written in basic and compiled to an executable. You can tell this because all of the sprites used in the game are flashed onto the screen in a rapid order before the game starts. This is common in basic games that use PUT and GET commands for sprite manipulation. Each sprite has to be on the screen and then GETed into a data array before it can be referenced as a sprite later on in the game.

(Editor's note: The sprites were stored as a series of relative directions -- up two pixels, left 7 pixels, draw filled circle at x,y, etc. -- so they took up less space. So they had to be drawn as well as GET'd. Another way to verify if a game was compiled BASIC was to search for BASIC keywords and errors; the string "RETURN without GOSUB" was found in GATO.EXE)

Featured a Run Speed parameter which you could change to run the game at "0", or 8088 speed, "1", or Compaq Deskpro speed (80286), or "2.5" (PCAT and AT&T 8086).

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Description from the packaging:

Submarine battle simulation.
Gato puts you in the control room of a World War II, GATO class, combat submarine. The simulation provides superior graphics and exciting operations that will provide many hours of challenging entertainment. Each mission begins with a coded radio message, assigning you to your objective. Then you are on your own somewhere in the South Pacific!

With Gato, you will control your sub's power, speed, depth, periscope and heading; while avoiding torpedoes and mines. You will receive up to 30 coded assignments from your headquarters including "seek and destroy," mining rescue operations. Use crew reports, radar, maps and periscope sightings to reach enemy targets. Set the level of difficulty, choose day or night settings and select various features on your sub to engage enemy ships.

Highlights of Gato:
All objects are tracked simultaneously with an accuracy greater than one ten-thousandth of a unit in an area of 500 million square units.
Three dimensional object perspective provides depth of field and realistic offensive and evasive ship movement.
Your record of enemy tonnage sunk is automatically entered in the Captain's log and can be saved for future games.
Five different types of realistic enemy ships to sink and destroy.
Life-like explosions (and sound effects).


http://www.mobygames.com/game/gato
